


Land Mines

by fansofcollisions



Category: Steins;Gate
Genre: Body Horror (Canon Typical), Gen, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-26 17:57:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3859504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fansofcollisions/pseuds/fansofcollisions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life goes on, as they say.<br/><br/><i>Okabe returns to school after the summer from hell.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Land Mines

**2010.09.02**

There’s a certain relief that comes with the start of the new semester of classes, an intoxicating normalcy in the promise of hours upon hours of dull classmates and monotonous lectures. It tastes like the first sip of a flavour you loved in childhood: forgotten, perhaps, but ultimately familiar. Safe.

Okabe goes to all of his classes, buys lunch from the supermarket across the street, confers with Daru during his longer breaks, bothers (terrifies) the librarian with inquiries about any new acquisitions. He is, in short, an average university student. He does nothing terribly remarkable. He is unnoticed by new professors. His name does not come up in conversation at the cafeteria. He fields any briefs about the Organization in crowded hallways, not lecture rooms. If anyone remembers the antics of Hououin Kyouma, recipient of last semester’s most-obnoxious-first-year award, they don’t mention it.

Daru is happy for a reprieve from the second-hand embarrassment. Mayuri wishes her friend would laugh more often like he used to.

\---

_Okabe makes sure, before the term even starts, to arrange his classes so he has a break when Mayuri’s day ends. He walks the twenty minutes to her high school, meets her at the gate, escorts her to her apartment, touches her shoulder in farewell. On Thursdays he returns to campus for an evening seminar. On Fridays he drops a capsule toy into her eager hands before he leaves for the weekend. Her delighted laughter has him whistling the whole way home._

_She always takes the safest roads. She walks on well-lit streets, crowded streets, main streets. There’s nothing to worry about._

_Still._

_It doesn’t hurt._

\----

**2010.09.21**

Okabe Rintarou receives a reprimand for vandalism of school property. The snitch declares he never thought someone so spindly could break plaster with an open fist, and regards Okabe darkly while the administrator’s back is turned. Okabe chortles and twirls and rambles about secret lab experiments and strength serums, and so there are no more inquiries, and so everything is easy. He’s always been persuasive.

The name Hououin Kyouma once again begins making the rounds. Some people snicker when they hear it. Most just roll their eyes.

**2010.09.23**

Lab Member 004 still hasn’t called, but that’s alright. It’s unlikely he could have gotten this far without the Organization tapping his phone, and their next words exchanged will require the utmost secrecy. It’s probably better that he hasn’t heard from her.

_Kurisu Makise the youngest scholar in history to give lecture at Carnegie Mellon_.

He doesn’t bother to parse the whole of the English title; the date of the article and the name attached are enough. Okabe closes the browser and lets out a dry chuckle. The empty lab echoes back his self reproach. Of course, there was nothing to worry about.

**2010.09.30**

“Did you hear? That weirdo from software – no, not glasses, the other one! – he almost lost his eye. Seriously, he was goofing around in middle of vector cal, acting all crazy, and smashed his face into the professor’s deck. Look, there he is! No, there! See that huge bruise on his cheek? Now we know Azame-san wasn’t ly- shhh, come on! He was looking…”

**2010.10.03**

Daru finds a soggy textbook, the first pinky hints of mildew creeping up its spine, serving as a makeshift doorstop in the bathroom of the lab. He picks it up with a towel, wrinking his nose, and with a delicate grip more suited to a bomb disposal specialist he deposits the book in the trash bin.

**2010.10.07**

Okabe asks Mayuri to lend him her pocketwatch. She tilts her head and gets that look in her eyes, like a wounded dog, the one that makes Okabe feel like a scoundrel of the worst sort. “Mayushii needs it...” She trails off, uncertain. Her fingers tighten against the cold metal, and Okabe wraps his larger hand around hers.

“Only for today,” he promises (lies). He grips a little too tightly and she flinches, relents. The chain links fall like silver coins against his skin. As he walks out the door, she grips the ghost in her empty palm and doesn’t ask. He convinces himself the reason is too absurd to mention and doesn’t explain.

Later, in class, Okabe measures one clock tick against each other. One, two, three, hesitation. Dissonance. A half beat’s distance between the two sounds. Has someone forgotten to wind the older classroom model? He’ll check to make sure after the other students leave; hopefully this professor won’t notice him climbing the furniture. The last one threatened to call campus security when she found Okabe, foot stuck in an open cabinet shelf and fingers grasping, feverish, toward the frozen timepiece. He might have been suspended if he hadn’t run out the door before she’d caught his face.

He’s gained a certain lightness on his feet in the last few months. Dodging bullets will do that for a person.

**2010.10.11**

Okabe receives top marks on four of his midterm exams. He receives a zero on the fifth, along with a black mark on his record. Cell phones are strictly prohibited. Opening his during an exam is grounds for expulsion. Was it worth it, to find out what his girlfriend wanted for dinner? The administrator narrows his eyes at Okabe and levers the confiscated cell between two knuckles, a flimsy attempt at a silver dollar trick, but his grip is loose and it tumbles from his hand onto the desk. Shamed and with rapidly purpling cheeks, he spits out, “Two strikes. I don’t want you in here again.” The strike of his palm falls dangerously close to the fumbled phone.

Okabe’s fingers twitch at his side. He thinks, for a moment, he understands Kiryuu’s panic.

There’s a letter opener on the desk, half hidden amongst the mess of paperwork littering the mahogany. It glints silver in the afternoon light. Sharp enough to cut through skin, perhaps. Just an observation. Nothing meant by it.

At the end of the day he gets his phone back. Okabe thinks he might cry as his hand closes around the silent instrument, gripping tight enough to warp the plastic casing.

Mayuri wanted him to pick up leeks. She’s making nabe tonight.

\---

_It was worth it._

\---

**2010.10.15**

“Ugh, does his always have to make such a scene?”

“If he doesn’t want to be here, he could drop this course. Registration doesn’t close for another week.”

“He can’t keep interrupting the professor like that. If he’s only going to leave halfway through, he shouldn’t bother coming at all.”

“At least he didn’t fall this time, hah!”

“I don’t know… Seeing someone’s eye gouged out would probably be more interesting than Greene’s Theorem.”

“Don’t let Doi-sensei hear you say that.”

“Still… didn’t he look sort of pale?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“I thought so.”

“If he was sick, he wouldn’t bother yelling his stupid conspiracy theories before leaving.”

“… Yeah.”

**2010.10.16**

Okabe always forgets to take out the trash, so Mayuri does it for him when the smell grows too pungent. A moldy book peeks through the potato peelings and instant ramen containers. Some of the letters are still readable through the palimpsest of stains on the spine, but she’s not one to pry.

\---

**_Forensic Technology_ ** _. It was the elective Okabe was most excited for. After course selection, he’d talked for weeks about the usefulness, about finally uncovering the dastardly evidence of the Organization’s foul deeds._

_He dropped the course before the first midterm._

_(It’s not that he didn’t like the material. It’s just that the sight of guns never used to make his hands shake.)_

\---

**2010.10.18**

It takes a professor and two students’ urgent hands to wake Okabe, another to wrench his palm from the circuit board, where tiny gold pins have bitten 256 pricks of red into his skin. His throat is raw, wrung out, and when he wakes fully he buries his face in his hands and coughs till it feels like the flesh will tear. Every breath tastes of silicon and metal and blood, so he forces them out until there’s nothing but the sting of stomach acid and the smell of salt. Is he crying? It must be from the coughing.

He’s held back after the class ends. There are services available, he’s told. A new centre, budgets shifted, it’s all new and shiny and maybe it will help him work through-- whatever this is? The faculty has been talking, his performance this term, _such a promising young man…_

It was just a nightmare. A half-formed recollection of things that never happened. It’s not worth talking about.  

\---

_Jasmine. Like the incense Mr. Braun burns on Sunday afternoons. Like the soap his mother used to press with her tiny star-shaped molds and lay to dry by the kitchen sink: a chorus of constellations on polished marble._

_He presses his nose into her hair and breathes deeply. In the scent, he can almost pretend the burning oil is nothing but a passing thing. After all, the stick will be extinguished, the eel frying on the wood stove is charred nicely, it’s all normal and safe and maybe Mayuri will come knock on his door soon, asking for a place at his table? She always does. She never leaves him alone for too long._

_The pocketwatch is lost somewhere in the dusk, but he knows it lies silent, wherever it fell. If God had to freeze time at one moment in history, he has a list of a thousand others better than this._

_He cradles her head in his hands, and breathes in, and ignores the carnage in front of him, pretends he can’t see through bloody strands the wrecked motorcycle and dead SERN agent twisted about its handlebars, or the shape of Mayuri’s body curled into the back wheel, twenty feet away._

\---

**2010.10.18**

In the cafeteria, Hououin Kyouma features in no less than five conversations.

**2010.10.19**

Okabe leaves his first class of the day halfway through the lecture. It’s the seventh time this semester. Even the students that found him amusing at the beginning, happy for a break from the tedium of another long proof, start to whisper angrily when he stands up, announces himself, swaggers about, laughs, leaves.

He nearly makes it to the bathroom before the vomit passes his lips.

**2010.10.20**

Okabe presses Send on an email he’s been meaning to deliver for weeks. Ruka hasn’t seen him for a while. They’ve been lax with the training regimen. It would be good to get up to the shrine, since Daru keeps insisting he get some fresh air – not that Daru is one to talk.

Lab Member 004 still hasn’t called.

**2010.10.22**

Okabe makes sure to drink two cups of coffee before every morning class. He still hates the taste, but he drinks it anyway: there are lesser and greater evils.

He tosses the second paper cup in the trash, and picks absentmindedly at the array of tiny scabs on his palm.

**2010.10.23**

Okabe doesn't walk the tunnels beneath the school anymore, even when the air grows chilled and their warmth might have been a relief. The shape of his handprint remains dented in the wall of the second corridor. No one has bothered to plaster it over.

**2010.10.25**

Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming. It’s an easy course, made easier by Daru’s presence at Okabe’s side. He pretends to believe Daru really does need to check his email thirty times, or that his fansite wouldn’t be easier to maintain on specialized software rather than a built-in browser debugger. He really _doesn’t_ need the help, but he appreciates the company nonetheless.

Today, turtle graphics. Each variable needs a name, and thus each turtle needs one as well. He makes a few more objects than strictly necessary for the simple task set to his class and assigns them in order.

_lab_members = [_

> _kyouma = Turtle.new(“Okabe Rintarou”, 1),_  
>  _mayushi = Turtle.new(“Shiina Mayuri”, 2),_  
>  _daru = Turtle.new(“Hashida Itaru“, 3),_  
>  _christina =_  
> 

His fingers pause over the keys.

This assignment didn’t call for eight turtles. In fact, three would probably be sufficient. He backspaces, closes the square bracket and continues on.

After about two hundred lines of Ruby code, the guilt hits.

\---

_*click*_

_original_lab_members = [_

_\---_

**2010.10.31**

Mayuri takes out the neglected trash again and finds in it a gift box, unopened, trussed up in ribbons and obviously wrapped with care. The handwriting on the card seems familiar, though the origin escapes her. It strikes Mayuri as strange, but then again, there are more pressing reasons to be worried about Okarin than this.

The faint scent of something floral hangs in the air.

**2010.11.04**

Okabe’s phone lights up on the desk, ten minutes into his first class. He snatches it off the wood before the rattling can send his pencils flying onto the floor and snaps it open between his legs.

Kiryuu is bringing him lunch.

She meets him at the footbridge, delicately bound bento in her right hand and a childish grip swinging from the other. Nae shouts the moment she sees him and drags her guardian forward at an astonishing pace for such short legs. Kiryuu’s long hair lofts out behind her like a pillow of flax as she stumbles after her charge. Everyone is out of breath by the time they meet.

The tissue around the bento is torn, but he thanks Kiryuu with a smile. She tells him to thank Mayuri, who left it in her care the night before. He tousles Nae’s hair and agrees and sends them off after a few minutes, grinning cheekily at Nae’s disappointed expression. Okabe has got worlds to save, and unfortunately there’s not nearly enough time to eat together. It can’t be helped.

The moment they round the bend the smile drops. Seconds later, the bento does as well, crashing with a metallic _ring_ against the pavestone; his fingers must have ripped straight through the tissue. When he looks down, he sees an army of little rice upas escaping down the incline.

He’s forgiven Kiryuu for what she did – or what she was capable of doing. He has.

He has.

He just thinks Mr. Braun should be more careful who he lets take his daughter out for a stroll.

He just thinks Mayuri shouldn’t be so quick to trust people she barely knows.

He just-

**2010.11.15**

Kaneda-sensei calls Okabe into his office at 3:20 in the afternoon. His walls are obscured by bookshelves, each filled with scraps of wire and broken hard drives and antique vacuum tubes. He blinks at Okabe through horn-rimmed glasses, nervously passing a rubber ball between his palms.

Okabe doesn’t need more than five minutes of guilty rambling before he realizes the research position he’d been promised for the following term has been given to someone else.

Of course he understands. He’s not quite the same driven individual who astounded the company of his first year electronics lab last semester. There’s only so much gallivanting around that a department can overlook. No, he isn’t angry; it was only an informal offer. This leaves more time for his own research, how could he complain? Could he perhaps still have access to the advanced lab? No, of course, only those with special permission, of course, of course.

He’d only accepted for the money, anyway.

**2010.11.16**

“Aren’t you glad you’re only in one of his classes?”

**2010.12.02**

Exams are looming. He’s done the math: either a near perfect mark on his final, or he’ll fail the course whose midterm he forfeited and risk being held back a semester. That isn’t something his parents will forgive easily, or without consequences. Okabe debates trussing up the lab in black, as he may well soon be mourning its passage. Would Mr. Braun take it out of his damage deposit if he painted the walls? Not that there’s much of that deposit left to speak of.

In all his life, he’s never failed a course. He thinks it should bother him more.  

**2010.12.04**

Ruka, in a moment of uncharacteristic forwardness, asks what Okabe will do when school is done.

The sword hangs loose in a delicate hand, its point nudging at the woodchips littering the ground. It has a blunted blade, not good for much more than practice. Still, it could take a limb off, with enough force behind the swing. A dangerous instrument for such a sweet visage.

Okabe tucks a blade of grass behind Ruka’s ear and says to keep silly questions until after their practice is through. When Okabe doesn’t bring it up at the end of their session, nothing more is said on the matter.

\---

_Ruka, listen to me. Hide Mayuri. Take your sword and hide and don’t come out until I come and get you both._

_I’ll be back. There’s something I have to-_

\---

**2010.12.10**

…

…

…

_[No new messages.]_

**2010.12.15**

There are three clocks in the exam room. Two hang on the walls on either side of the gym, counting up the hours in perfect unison. The third sits on the table by the head invigilator, tracking the minutes passed in scarlet and black. It’s distracting.

Okabe lays Mayuri’s pocketwatch beside his ruler and calculator and bottle of water and formula sheet and doesn’t bother checking his exam when he finishes, though the clock at the front says he has a little less than an hour left to do so. Another glance over won’t change the result.

\---

_When he leaves, the pocketwatch reads 63 minutes remaining._

\---

**2010.12.17**

Okabe is leaving his last exam, twenty minutes early, handful of pencils halfway into his open backpack, when it starts to rain. He holds out his palm to the downpour. It falls in heavy droplets on the upturned hand, smearing his skin an oily black, and he looks up just in time to see the torrent approaching.

The stream of sludge hits him straight in the temple and knocks him off balance. He only hears the tail end of the laughter through the splatter against the pavement.

Drenched and chattering, he pulls himself back into an alcove and starts shifting the liquid off his face. The smell of new asphalt is heady and he sneezes violently, showering the concrete steps with alternating droplets of oil and mucus.

End of semester pranks, nothing personal in it. It’s just bad timing.

The next people out the door barely manage to avoid slipping in the mess, and their swearing rings loud and familiar in Okabe’s ear. They’ve come from writing the same exam as him.  Two girls, a boy. He lent the second girl a pencil in class, once upon a time. They glance at him with eyes narrowed in suspicion, as if he’s purposefully blocked their path. A lifetime ago, he might have played it off as exactly that. Why waste a good opportunity for drama?

He contemplates, opens his mouth a fraction of an inch.

It’s just that he’s so _tired_.

Okabe leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes, waits for their attention to shift, anticipates the retreating footsteps. When he opens them, he’s alone again. A droplet of clear water falls from the roof onto his nose and he blinks, and blinks again, and thinks that he might as well stay a while longer. There’s nowhere for him to be.

After a few minutes of counting the clinging specks of moisture above his head, he fishes his phone from a mercifully undrenched pocket and calls Daru to ask him to bring a change of clothes.

**2010.12.18**

Mayuri finishes her last day of classes. Okabe picks her up at the gate to the high school and swings her around and she giggles, and makes him promise to take her out for frozen yoghurt as a reward.

\---

_What are you most excited to do on the break? Okarin?_

_Spend more time with you._

\---

**2010.12.21**

All marks are posted. Both Daru and Okabe pass every course. (Okabe skillfully dodges the question of his grade point average in the subsequent phone call to his parents.) The lab is safe.

**2010.12.21**

The semester ends.

**2010.12.21**

Lab Member 004 still hasn’t called.


End file.
